In 1948, two brothers revolutionized the food service industry in an attempt to address to more fast-paced life styles, increase efficiency and boost revenue. First, they ran the data and found most of their profit came from hamburgers. So, they simplified the menu to focus on that item, potato chips and apple pies, according to author Bill Bryson.

But the real innovation was more conceptual than that. Brothers Maurice and Richard McDonald saw their kitchen for what it truly was: an assembly line. In 1952, they purchased a new building that would both catch the eyes of passing drivers and give them the space to create a clean, extremely efficient, standardized process for preparing meals. That single innovation, some 70 years ago, continues to inform the business of quick service restaurants and fast casual food retail in important new ways. Here’s a look at three other innovations that promise to shape the restaurant business in 2018.

1. The integrated supply chain in the contemporary modern kitchen

The integrated supply chain of food covers a network of vendors, manufacturing centers, warehouses, distribution centers and restaurants that raw materials move through, and are changed to meet the needs of the final consumer. The complexity of the food supply chain has grown enormously since Maurice and Richard McDonald’s day, but what remains critical is data. Data informs decisions at every successful food retail operation.

Gone are the days of a burger, chips and an apple pie as the main menu. Today large QSR restaurants can have a dozen different cheeseburger choices on the menu, 13 different sides to choose from, a half-dozen salads and 18 drink choices. And then there are the seasonal coffees, short-term signature sandwiches and other offerings that come and go. This food and drink comes from many different parts of the country, and depending on the operator, even the world. Connected restaurant real-time data provides operators information on everything from food costs to cross-unit operations managers and owners need to make strategic decisions, spot trends, identify issues and reward successes.

At Panasonic, data is at the heart of what we call the “connected restaurant.” This covers not just assembly line technology with conveyor belts that move food as workers prep. It’s a digital overhaul that includes connecting all parts of the restaurant to provide data analytics that promote a better operation. Software ties together disparate functions, collects and interprets data and sends out alerts to quickly inform restaurant operators of things going wrong, and right.

2. Transparency in the food supply chain

Food safety and quality has always been important to restaurants; what’s changing is the attention that consumers are paying to the topic. Social media, education and government regulations are helping to drive interest. “In 2018, expect to see transparency and traceability for all, regardless of their income,” predicts market intelligence agency Mintel. In other words, patrons will be able to learn just about everything they want to know about a food’s origins, ingredients and nutritional information. One example: Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC), a SUBWAY franchisee-owned and operated purchasing group.

Focusing on the “Fresh Forward” theme, IPC has for several years worked to achieve the full traceability of suppliers' products as they travel from their source into SUBWAY restaurants, according to a recent article in Modern Restaurant Management. “Knowing exactly where a specific lot code of food product is in the supply chain is our goal. If a product is a risk to our brand, and our customers, the benefits of adopting the use of standards are immeasurable,” Dennis Clabby, IPC’s executive vice president, purchasing, told the magazine, highlighting a view that will accelerate across the industry in the coming year.

3. QSR in the age of autonomy

New technology and pilot projects have generated incredible interest in autonomous vehicles. Developments range from driverless cars navigating city streets in the U.S., Japan and Europe to announcements of advanced technology that will speed developments in both autonomous vehicles and smart infrastructure. These developments are pushing automakers to rethink the business of buying and selling vehicles, and the same developments are expected to reshape retail, restaurants and other industries.

As cars start talking to cars and road infrastructure, it’s not a stretch to imagine a car communicating with a restaurant. Here’s how it might work: A vehicle’s infotainment system uses beacon technology to connect to the restaurant’s operations center. The restaurant accesses data on the purchasing characteristics of the vehicle so that, when this vehicle arrives, the system knows that its occupants typically order two double cheeseburgers, fries and a soda. Already major restaurant operators are rethinking the future of the drive thru.

To understand the future of quick service restaurants and fast casual establishments, tech companies such as Panasonic not only invest in in-house innovation, they also devote considerable time evaluating, testing and supporting nascent entrepreneurial ideas that could be fundamental to not only future driverless cars, but also the food business. In this scenario, tech leaders take on a much greater role as third party ecosystem managers which involves code sharing, open innovation and other partnerships. The beneficiaries are consumers who gain customized and fast service they’ve come to expect while allowing owners to increase revenue and efficiency.

Matt O’Connor is the Senior Vice President Food Service & Retail Solutions Group at Panasonic Corporation of North America.

Route 66 was constructed to address a need created by an emerging technology: the rise of the auto in the United States. When completed in 1926, the highway gave motorists quick passage (at the time) from Chicago to Los Angeles. This transportation shift also gave rise to another innovation. In 1947, Red's Giant Hamburg in Missouri opened the first drive-thru window so customers could pick up their food without leaving their car.

This year the drive thru turns 70, and its influence on the food business is staggering. Americans made 12.4 billion trips to the drive thru in 2016, according to a QSR magazine study, which said that quick service restaurants routinely generate 60–70 percent of their business through the outdoor lane. McDonald’s alone reported that the drive thru accounted for 70 percent of its U.S. sales last year.

Driverless cars, mobile and automation

Tech continues to shape the drive-thru with the biggest changes yet to come. One force is the auto industry. By 2030, around a quarter of all miles driven in the U.S. could be in shared autonomous electric vehicles, according to research. Already technology providers are looking at ways driverless cars could change the food business. More immediately, mobile communications, and automated supply chain advances are spurring shifts.

Forecasting food’s future tech

At September’s FSTec restaurant industry food show, where I delivered a keynote presentation on integrated solutions shaping food service, audience questions covered everything from mobility to connected kitchen strategies. Here are a few ideas.

Ever approach the drive-thru in the middle of a rainstorm? You and everybody else. At America’s drive thrus, bottlenecks are often inevitable, and companies are introducing technologies to serve customers what they want when they want it.

Innovation at Habitat Burger Grill

A few years ago, a chargrilled burger from The Habit Burger Grill, a nationwide fast-casual restaurant concept that specializes in fresh ingredients, was named the “best tasting burger in America.” To accommodate growing interest in its food, The Habit Burger Grill opened drive-thru windows.

To handle the numbers of people who want to use the outdoor lanes, the company introduced a careful mix of planning and technology. It turned to Panasonic Toughbooks to take orders from customers while they wait in the drive-thru line. This gives restaurant employees multiple points to take orders instead of relying on the traditional microphone and menu setup. By having employees move up and the down the line while cars wait, ordering and drive-thru pickup is faster.

DQ’s experience

In Texas, select Dairy Queen restaurants have moved toward putting the entire ordering process into customer’s hands. By providing Panasonic’s solution for self-service touch-screen kiosks, the company has put the power to fully customize orders directly into the hands of their tech-savvy customers. Now customers can place and pay for their orders on self-service kiosks. This frees up staff to more quickly complete orders.

For many food franchisees, profit nirvana is the connected kitchen, which links technologies in the front of the house—including drive-thru windows and kiosks—to automation systems in the back. Robotics is one area garnering excitement. More immediately, tech companies are leveraging other forms of automation—such as algorithms and artificial intelligence—to create solutions to repetitive tasks, like predictive maintenance on a deep fryer so food oil is ordered and changed just in time.

For more on how technology is reshaping the restaurant business, read The Future of the Drive Thru: Overcoming Choke Points.

The world of logistics has taken on a high tech approach to managing transportation and tracking, monitoring and tracing the goods moving around the world. Supply chain professionals expect to understand the status of their orders in detail and in real time. That means more than just whether the package is on board the truck, but also where it is, if the temperature and other conditions in the trailer are correct, did the package get dropped, and lots of other factors. The electronic components that monitor all those conditions as well as information about the vehicle itself need to be able to connect to both the driver's on-board application and to online systems. Telematics, the IoT, mobility and cloud all enable those connections.

Today’s vehicles are monitored and controlled by electronic control modules (ECMs). The number and variety of ECMs has increased exponentially since they were first added to cars and trucks in the mid 1990s, to the point that today a typical commercial truck has anywhere from 30 to 50 ECMs that connect to the central engine buss and control how the vehicle works. They also monitor conditions as part of their control duties. Telematics devices connect to the engine buss and collect the data generated by the ECMs. They then connect wirelessly to online services and deliver the ECM data so it can be used in a wide variety of applications to help manage fleets, provide notifications to supply chain participants, and deliver information to drivers for streamlined efficiency.

The data collected from the vehicle telematics needs to be delivered to a variety of interested participants in order to be useful. Possibly the most important player is the driver of the truck. Increasingly, trucking companies are turning to mobile handheld devices rather than screens hardwired and mounted in the cab, as the preferred way to both deliver information to drivers and for drivers to interact with that information. In part, the move is driven by the flexibility offered by wirelessly connected units that can be used outside the cab and for multiple purposes. Even more important is the upcoming change in federal regulations that mandates that all commercial vehicles must have electronic logging devices (ELD) by December 2017. For drivers, that means the official end of paper logs. However, the incorporation of ELDs also means those devices can be used for additional tasks like the inspection, or ‘walkaround’ report.

“ELDs must be mounted in the cab, but also must be able to be presented outside the cab,” explains Kelly Frey, VP of product marketing for Telogis, a Verizon Company. “ELDs can no longer be bolted down in the cab. One reason for that is safety officials are not permitted inside cabs so the logs need to be on something the inspectors can access.” This means the handheld device needs to be able to connect wirelessly to their information sources.

In addition to meeting the specifications of the federal mandate there are practical implications to consider when using handheld or tablets as ELDs. Trucking environments can be tough on equipment, and consumer grade devices can easily be damaged by dropping or the vibrations during use in a commercial vehicle. ELD devices need to be able to withstand this kind of abuse. Also,outdoor conditions are often less than ideal when truckers need to inspect their rigs or take photos of damage. The ELDs need to be impervious to rain and snow as well as grease and dirt so that they can be simply wiped and washed when they get dirty. And the screens need to be readable even when used in bright sunlight. Most of these requirements are unspecified in the regulations but are critical to successful implementation of the ELD regulation that turns the telematics and other data captured with a multi-purpose mobile device, into useful information that makes trucking safer and more efficient.

As trucking fleets consider their strategy for ELD compliance and the devices to be used, they should also consider other tasks and processes that can be improved as the functionality of the device for the needs of drivers and their jobs.  For information on Panasonic mobility solutions for trucking and logistics, visit us online. 

Utility service fleets and the inventory they carry are in constant flux based on the specifics of the service calls they are destined for, making managing the inventory on every vehicle critical to the success of every call. According to industry watcher Scott Madden, “achieving high levels of service requires maintaining more of the right inventory and improved planning. The challenge is that ‘more’ does not equal ‘better,’ and there is a cost to achieve high-service levels… Knowing the right parts necessary to maintain high-service levels is critical to the optimization equation and is based on a number of factors, including inventory item standardization, criticality, visibility to historical usage (at the highest level of a company possible), and known future work orders.”

Traditional paper based methods of inventory tracking have become hindrances because they require manual updates that are labor intensive, error prone, and are not updated on a timely basis. Today’s mobile technology used in combination with modern inventory management software can maintain accurate information about where inventory is located and assure that vehicles are loaded with the items necessary for the specific jobs they are scheduled to perform before they leave the yard.

Utility companies are faced with multiple issues that affect their operations. But when it comes to providing service, the most important things to manage are those that relate to delivering a first time fix on time. That list includes service staff, vehicles, and inventory. Having the right inventory in hand like cable splices, fuses, disconnect switches, personal protective equipment, power lines, and transformers when the technician arrives at the service location can make the difference between a single trip completion and lengthening the time to repair, adding costs associated with multiple trips and damage to customer relationships. End-to-end inventory visibility can make certain that necessary parts are on the right vehicle bound for the right destination and reduce or eliminate delays and added costs.

Inventory and the supply chain

Today’s concept of inventory management extends from the purchase order to final delivery and is considered to be part of the company’s supply chain. An integrated system brings together the processes and item information so that when a work order is created, the list of parts needed to successfully complete it is checked against the current inventory loaded on the vehicle. If any parts are missing they are flagged to be loaded before the vehicle is dispatched. This kind of coordination of information can eliminate return trips to the shop to retrieve the missing part which reduces time to repair, adds employee time, and increases fuel consumption.

Mobile devices that can read barcode and RFID tags on inventory items offer a transition from paper based systems because service staff simply aim their handheld unit at the inventory tag rather than write product codes on forms. The handheld device recognizes the inventory item’s tag and connects wirelessly to company inventory systems then transmits the item information, associating it with the work order, customer, and inventory quantity controls. Instant updates like this mean that orders for replacement parts can be triggered automatically through the company ERP system when quantities fall below reorder levels. But it also means that billing can be initiated immediately upon completion of the work order, and that can reduce the time it takes to receive payment.

Futureproofing

Many utility providers implement this kind of automated system over a period of time based on budgetary and infrastructure considerations so it’s important that the devices they consider can support a wide range of operating systems and any inventory management applications that may be in use both now and in the future. And a range of portable device configurations should be part of the consideration because different jobs call for different devices. For example, a technician working on a pole may be best served by a handheld device while one working primarily inside the cab of a vehicle could use a laptop or a tablet.

Reasons to automate

Every utility company has its own financial metrics to consider when it comes to implementing automation but should start with a review of current operations with an eye to finding areas that can be made more efficient. Some organizations may look for cost justifications and reduced expenses while others may need to meet regulatory mandates like cyber security, or industry-wide changes like smart grids. The issues are different for every company but all lead to the creation of a more efficient inventory management system that reduces excess inventory and puts the right components in the right places at the right times.

More information about rugged mobility solutions for utilities is available online.